Category: Games

Sony’s 2016 press conference may have been the single greatest video game press conference that I had ever seen, so saying the this year’s conference had some extremely high expectations would be a savvier understatement. As a result of these expectations this press conference was disappointing to me. Many games weren’t included including The Last of Us 2, Death Stranding and STILL no announcements regarding whatever Sucker Punch is working on. All round there wasn’t many announcements at all, the whole thing was basically just updates on games that were revealed last year. The conference also felt to short and I thought there wasn’t enough talking by the presenter, which is something I never thought I would say. However Sony did pull through will amble PSVR updates and once again hit it out of the park regarding production value.

The first truly notable announcement to me, was the Horizon Zero Dawn expansion announcement. I thoroughly enjoyed Horizon, so much so that I have the Platinum Trophy for the game, and this inevitable expansion is something ill definitely be picking up. The trailer itself didn’t give us really any insight into what we might be doing in the expansion but as long as there are enthralling machines to slaughter I’ll be there. Another game I’m incredibly excited for is Days Gone. It was my favourite game of last year’s E3 and its showing this year restabilised the excitement I have for this game. Hopefully Sony Bend can get this game out soon so it doesn’t get even more comparisons to The Last of US when they are clearly very different both in terms of tone and gameplay. In the demo they showed I was relating far more to the characters than I did last year and hopefully this game, like Horizon has established Guerrilla, establishes Sony Bend as a reliable and creative studio comparable to Naughty Dog.

Another game that had a very impressive showing last year at E3 and was further established as a heavily anticipated game for me heading into 2018 was God of War. I have never played a God of War game because Kratos is such an unappealing and boring character but in both of these trailers Kratos has come across and appealing and interesting. Both of the trailers we have seen on this game have had great mini stories within them with the bonding between father and son in last year’s trailer and the swerve in this one with the massive sea monster. If this was typical boring Kratos, he would have attack this thing instantaneously and I really appreciated that the creature wanted to help them. The conference ended with Spiderman for PS4 which had a pretty epic trailer showing both some gameplay and the essential web swinging mechanic. I remain optimistic regarding this game because Spiderman is my favourite Superhero and I have been burned in the past in regards to these games and hopefully this game has something resembling a compelling plot.

Sony’s E3 2017 Press Conference gets a 6. This is because of the bar that last year’s press conference was raised so far, this in comparison, was nothing. To improve this conference I believe that Sony should have held the announcement of The Last of Us Part 2 for E3. Undoubtedly if they had done this they would have won this year’s E3 instead of Nintendo.

Bethesda’s E3 conference was a lot shorter and more compacted than I was expecting, but overall there were only 2 games that interested me: The Evil Within 2 and Wolfenstein: The New Colossus. The other additional announcements surrounded games that revolved around either VR or large RPG’s that I don’t have the time to get into at the moment. Also ‘Payed Mods’ are a massive point of contention coming out of this conference but I’m not equipped to give opinions on anything to do with mods. Both the previously mentioned game impressed me particularly because of their cool, creative and engaging trailers.

First of the trailer for, ‘The Evil Within 2’ was incredibly interesting to watch and appealing to the eyes, so much so that I’m now enticed to buy the first game and give it a go. The only details about this series I remember is that, at least at initial realise, the game wasn’t in widescreen and that caused an uproar with many players. But the trailer was compelling mainly because of the art style and because the cinematics looked interesting. It also didn’t seem overly scary, which is something I can defiantly support because I’m not a massive fan of the horror genre. I do however already own the first Wolfenstein game but only played it for approximately 2 hours or so, and it really didn’t capture my attention as it seemed to do for other people. But I’m willing to give it another go, simply because I find the premise of an alternative history with the German’s winning WW2 so interesting.

The predominant reaction to this conference is very negative coming out of it, but I didn’t find it any better or worse than EA’s outing yesterday. So for that reason Bethesda’s E3 2017 conference gets a 5. Tomorrow the two conferences that I’m looking most forward too with outings from both Ubisoft and Sony. Hopefully we’ll get news and gameplay from Far Cry 5 and The Last of Us Part 2.

EA’s press conference officially marked the beginning of E3 2017 and it was more of a warm-up instead of an immediate explosion of awesome and epic news. We got a completely out of place marching band to open the show, which was followed by a variety of different games, with one in particular stand out. We got the obligatory announcements surrounding sport related games, the anticipated Star Wars properties and other minor announcements. This is the first of many E3 press conferences that I will be covering this week. The others I will be covering will most likely be Bethesda, Ubisoft and Sony, these in particular have been chosen because I have a PS4 and do not have an Xbox One or Nintendo Switch so I’m not too interested in there respected companies conferences.

The conference began with several small announcements and a tease of a bigger announcement down the road at Gamescon, for Battlefield 1. The announcements revolved around DLC for the game including maps and story missions about the Russians in World War One. The game itself is one I only played briefly only in the multiplayer, and have always wanted to get back to so maybe this expansion will give me an excuse to play it again. This was followed by the aforementioned obligatory sports related content from the press conference including Fifa story continuation from the last installation, the inclusion of a story mode in Madden and more NBA gameplay related content. I’m sure somebody was interested in these announcements but personally I wasn’t, I just wish EA would pick up the licence for the Rugby League IP and then I would care about sport related gaming. But the one stand-out game announcement I mentioned previously was unveiled around this point in the conference which was: ‘A Way Out.’

In easily the highlight of the entire EA conference was when a rare passionate engaging talker came out and actually talked about his game, A Way Out, like a real person and not some manipulated EA bot. Apparently the studio behind this game has made another similar game to this in the past but I never played it so everything to this game looked incredibly creative and fresh. I like the emphasis on coach cooperative play and all the other little unique nuances that the developer mentioned in his presentation including, the cut-scenes being different depending on the player’s point of view and the problem solving techniques the game uses. The only worry I have for the game is that it’ll be super short but hopefully the game is a solid 4-8 hours of greatness.

The other two announcements that weren’t Sport or Star Wars were for the upcoming Need for Speed game and a new IP called Anthem, from BioWare of Mass Effect fame. For the entirety Need for Speed portion of the conference I was just thinking why EA haven’t purchased the Fast and Furious IP yet? The similarities are undeniable but racing games that don’t have karts in them are always underwhelming to me. Anthem seems like it has some potential but too little was shown for me to pass judgement or become invested in this game, as of yet.

The conference concluded with a never-ending cycle of Star Wars fan service. This constant Star Wars fan service as a whole seems to be never-ending and I really couldn’t care less if I tried. But I’m not going to start the Star Wars debate here so, Battlefront looks basically the same as the first one but with a story mode that I won’t play if I even buy this game. But overall the conference was an aright warm-up hopefully that’ll build up to an earth shattering Sony presentation later in the week. Overall this conference from top to bottom gets a 5.